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VICTORIA — While the B.C. Liberals charge ahead on replacing the George Massey tunnel with a toll bridge on the same financial model as the Port Mann, the latter project has become a chronic money loser, according to the government’s own budget statements.

The fiscal tale of woe is spelled out in the accounts for the Transportation Investment Corporation, the Crown corporation established by the Liberals to oversee the Port Mann and lately ticketed to take on the Massey replacement as well.

When the Liberals launched the TI corporation (as it is known) back in 2009, they envisioned it would be able to put the Port Mann and related infrastructure on a paying basis by next year.

But that target had to be abandoned soon after the bridge opened to paying customers in 2011 because traffic fell well short of the initial projections; consequently, tolling revenues did so as well.

If traffic and tolls were on track with the Liberals original plan, revenues would be topping $200 million for the current financial year ending March 31. Instead the latest projection is for revenues to fall $70 million short of the initial target, according to the financial statements tabled last week in the legislature as part of the provincial budget.

The corporation has made some progress in capping operating expenses and accounting charges like depreciation. Still the loss for the year is pegged to hit $86 million, nor is the picture scheduled to brighten any time soon.

The main culprit on the loss side is the mounting cost of servicing the $3.3 billion project debt, currently $131 million and climbing. And while the Liberals point to increased tolling revenue on the project as a sign of emerging financial health, the budget projections tell a different story.

Tolls on the Port Mann are scheduled to bring in an additional $26 million over the next three years, an increase of 20 per cent. But debt is projected to grow by $38 million, or 30 per cent, over the same period.

With the main component of expenses growing faster than the sole source of revenues, one doesn’t need a pocket calculator to realize that the tide of red ink can only keep rising.

For the three years starting April 1, the TI corporation is forecast to endure further losses totalling $300 million, which in turn will push the cumulative deficit for the first seven years of operations to just over $700 million.

So much for Liberal claims that the financial turnaround is at hand.

When might the Port Mann project realistically expect to reach the break even point? Within 12 to 15 years, I was told Monday by a representative of the TI corporation. Meaning 2028 at the earliest and 2031 at the latest, or more than a decade behind those heady initial projections from the Liberals.

All of which amounts to belated vindication for the former auditor general of the province, John Doyle.

While serving as the independent watchdog on provincial finances in the years 2007 to 2013, Doyle repeatedly challenged the Liberals for classifying the Port Mann project as self-financing long before the construction was completed.

“There is no bridge. There are no tolls,” he said at one point, before registering a qualification on the government books over the self-supporting claim. He also cited a number of “high-risk assumptions” in the financial modelling that had the project reaching the break-even point as soon as next year.

While the Liberals now concede their initial modelling for the Port Mann tolls was overly optimistic, it hasn’t shaken their determination to proceed on a similar basis with the proposed $3.5-billion high-level bridge to replace the aging Massey Tunnel.

In releasing the business plan for the project late last year, Transportation Minister Todd Stone indicated that the Massey replacement would also be tolled and overseen by the same Crown corporation as the Port Mann.

His rationale was that with two toll bridges sheltering under the same corporate umbrella, the government might realize some “economies of scale.” Then again, the savings might not amount to much if the Massey replacement takes as long to reach the break even point as the Port Mann.

“Business models demonstrate the ability of the TI corp. to maintain the operations and meet the liabilities of the project through project toll revenues, without subsidy or support from government,” says the business plan.

“Based on assumptions regarding toll rates, traffic volumes, traffic growth rate and borrowing rates, the project debt is retired within a range of 35 to 60 years, well within the asset’s useful life of 200 years.”

During the press conference where he released the business plan, Stone echoed former highways minister Phil Gaglardi in describing the original Massey crossing as “a triumph of the imagination.”

One can only hope that the same characterization could not be applied to the minister’s financial projections, which still have to undergo scrutiny and final approval by Treasury Board in the Ministry of Finance.

But even if the numbers turn out to be of the bankable kind, the business plan indicates that once the replacement bridge is completed in 2022, it could take most of the rest of the century to balance the books and retire the debt.

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